Jency Abarca, a 33-year-old Torontonian, started her brand Vyb3 & Co. as a blog in 2018.

It came into existence as an assignment for a course she was taking, and quickly became a place for her to share personal writing about hip-hop culture.

Abarca’s vision for her blog was to create and present unique discussions about hip-hop that inspired voices and created representation from Toronto.

She found that a lot of people related to her blog because of its authenticity. This led to her turning it into a movement and creating a symbol/logo for the brand Vyb3 & Co.

The next big step for Abarca’s brand is to collaborate with schools and students to host pop-up talent shows. She hopes to create platforms for young people to showcase their skills, especially in hip-hop.

“Our focus is to be able to display the artistic and creative side of students, and especially the youth within the Toronto city because I feel like that’s important… Art and creativity often saves these kids from turning to other things, or even if they do, it saves them out of that,” said Abarca. “We are wetting our feet right now.”

Abarca is an only child and self-proclaims to have always had an imaginative mind, which helped her get into writing.

She says that her social nature helps her connect with new people easily. She also takes pride in the close bond she shares with her cousins who support her in many aspects of her creative life and the brand.

However, she was not always focused on her brand. Abarca has worn many career hats during her time, including holding positions as a receptionist, assistant, and manager at a car dealership.

She found herself disliking those jobs more and more, spending much time regretting the path on which she was travelling.

“I hated my job, I would be going inside the bathroom, bawling my eyes out during my shift and I was making all the money in the world, but I hated my life… I realized I was so scared to sell for myself… because what if nobody buys from me, but I was going into work to self-build someone else’s dream, doing the exact same thing.”

After realizing that she could put the same amount of effort into her own brand, she left her job and started studying public relations, where she learned marketing and other things useful to her right now.

Abarca says that God is her biggest supporter, recalling having lost the Instagram log-in for her brand account for more than two years and miraculously being granted access after a prayer.

“I had just parted ways from my job, and I said ‘okay God, what am I going to do now? I’m lost.’ I don’t know if I want to be finance manager again. I don’t know if I didn’t go into Vyb3 again. And then I sort of just, you know, sat down, and had a conversation… if this is your will for me align it for me… ever since then, we’ve been doing good. We are now getting into reels and getting good feedback from people on our content.”

As things move forward with the brand, Abarca is excited to look to the future of restarting her blog and even launching a podcast soon.

The brand products, such as clothes and hats, are designed by Jency along with her graphic design team. They hope to create storefronts in the future to become ‘one stop shops for Hip-Hop’.

Her dream is to have storefronts in Toronto, New York, Miami, California, and Atlanta – five places she considers as having the biggest hip-hop influence.

“Bet on yourselves. There’s going to be so many people in our lifetime that are going to give up on us… but the worst feeling is for you to give up on yourself,” Abarca said.

For more information on the brand visit www.vyb3.com.